For justice, the LOL League case is closed

Five and a half years after a scandal with worldwide resonance, the LOL League affair is no longer one for justice: the last procedure ended after an agreement between Release and Vincent Glad, one of its former journalists who was fired at the time. This agreement was concluded during the summer, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned from consistent sources on Wednesday October 2. When contacted, both parties declined to comment.

Conclusion of legal proceedings “cements once and for all the thesis of a media frenzy” in this case of accusations of cyberharassment targeting journalists in particular, one of the people accused told AFP in 2019, on condition of anonymity.

Under this agreement, Release abandoned his appeal after a decision by the Paris industrial tribunal in 2022 favorable to Mr. Glad, which therefore becomes final. On July 12, 2022, the industrial tribunal ordered the daily to pay a total of nearly 52,000 euros to the journalist for dismissal without real and serious cause and in a vexatious manner.

The LOL League is the name of a private Facebook group, created in 2010 by Mr. Glad, which brought together around thirty members including young journalists and communicators. In February 2019, after an article from the verification service of ReleaseCheckNews, this group was accused of having committed cyberharassment in the early 2010s on the social network Twitter (now named X), mainly against feminist activists.

These accusations led to several members of the group being quickly fired. Having its roots in the small milieu of Parisian Twitter, this affair had worldwide media resonance. It had provoked debates on sexism in journalism and online violence.

“Insufficiently characterized offense”

However, on the justice side, the investigation by the Paris prosecutor’s office for harassment was closed without further action in February 2022, for “insufficiently characterized offense”. At the industrial tribunal, before the decision favorable to Mr. Glad, the magazine The Unrockuptibles was convicted in September 2021 for the dismissal without real and serious cause of an editor-in-chief who was a member of the group. Finally, in June 2023, Release and another dismissed journalist, Alexandre Hervaud, reached an agreement to close their dispute with the industrial tribunal. Mr. Hervaud was rejected at first instance and appealed.

Following the momentum of surveys carried out by the sites L’ADN and Next INpact at the beginning of 2020, then Marianne in 2021, several media outlets have concluded in recent years that “unprecedented media hype” in this matter. They pointed out the fact that the LOL League had been wrongly described as the instigator of coordinated cyberharassment actions, carried out by all its members.

“In reality, only a few members (…) were accused of obscene jokes, crude photomontages or repeated mockery, not the group as a whole.had thus recognized the American newspaper New York Times in a correction published in April 2021.

In France, Arrêt sur images carried out a critical rereading of its coverage at the end of 2021. “It’s a textbook case of media hype, the proportions it has taken are crazy”declared its ex-mediator, Loris Guémart, to AFP in February, to mark the fifth anniversary of the affair. Freeze frames “does not say that the affair did not deserve any article”he emphasized. “But it deserved neither the tone of most of the articles, nor the volume of media content published”.

“The end of the proceedings is a big step but the traces that remain online are a monstrous burden for the reputation of people whose honor was sullied in 2019”assured one of the suspects to AFP on Wednesday, pointing in particular to the Wikipedia page devoted to the case.